Saturday, February 27, 2010

In Charlotte County, Fla., authorities say a young woman walked into a retaining pond Friday and held her two young children under the water. Luckily, an officer and two bystanders were able to save the kids before they were harmed. Mom is being evaluated, and the children are with their grandparents.

In Massachusetts, there's going to be a new inquest into the death of Amy Bishop's brother. Bishop is the professor accused of shooting several colleagues at University of Alabama. Years ago, Bishop was investigated -- but never charged -- for shooting and killing her brother, who was believed to have died in a gun accident.

Welcome back to the Open Thread, our blog's space for off-topic comments and
discussion. If you've seen an interesting story somewhere else, feel
free to post a link below.

As
always, please follow our standard rules: Please sign your comments,
and please avoid profanity, as well as racially and sexually abusive
language. And when you sign your comments, please use only one
nickname.If you need to reach me, just send an email to jhart@kcstar.com. Thanks again, and have a great day!

From Don Bradley: An Oak Grove man who allegedly hit his girlfriend in the face with a piece of firewood was charged today with domestic assault.

Witnesses
said Robert Lee Haynes, 37, became enraged early Wednesday because he
had trouble starting a fire. A neighbor, who drove the victim to a
hospital, told police that Haynes beat, kicked and threw the woman
around the kitchen until she was unconscious.

Olathe police say that Latino Y Punto, 909 S. Parker St., was robbed about 11:50 this morning. Police say there were two robbers, one of whom was armed.

The police have identified a person of interest but the investigation is still ongoing. The suspects are described as a Hispanic male in his twenties, approximately 5'8" tall and a Black Male in his 30's with a medium build. This investigation continues and anyone with information regarding this incident is encouraged to contact the Olathe Police Department at 913-971-7455 or the TIPS Hotline at 816-474-TIPS.

About 64 percent of U.S. inmates have a disorder that involves alcohol or drugs, a new study says.

The Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, based at Columbia University, says that only 11 percent of those who have these problems actually get any counseling or rehab while they're behind bars. They argue that America could save more money in the long term if they widely expanded programs to help convicts get clean. (Because a lot of their crimes involved drugs or alcohol.) Snip from the press release:

The report found
that if all inmates who needed treatment and aftercare received such
services, the nation would break even in a year if just over 10 percent
remained substance and crime free and employed. Thereafter, for each
inmate who remained sober, employed and crime free the nation would
reap an economic benefit of $90,953 per year.

That's true. But it's still not clear whether that ruling applies only at the federal level. (That case centered on the District of Columbia, which is under the federal umbrella.) And it's not clear how it effects rules created by states and cities. The Supremes had seemed to indicate that some gun-control laws, such as those forbidding felons from owning guns, were OK.

For one, Chief Corwin writes, they don't know the make or model of the attacker's vehicle, assuming he even uses one. And he argues against the idea that police are hiding what they know -- he says police have been upfront about the existence of a serial rapist, but they are withholding some details of the crimes, so that they don't accidentally undermine their own investigation or the eventual prosecution.

From Christine Vendel: A woman who placed an advertisement in an alternative weekly
newspaper offering massages told Kansas City police she was raped
Thursday in a motel room.

The 27-year-old woman said a man called
her in response to her ad and she agreed to provide one hour of massage
for $100. The man showed up at the motel in the 8200 block of Hickman
Mills Road about 10:45 a.m. and told her he was a police officer. He
threatened to arrest her if she didn’t have sex with him. Police
reports noted that the suspect did not show the victim any
identification, badge or uniform.

In New York City, a restaurant owner is going to prison for 15 years after he threatened his building owner with a variety of weapons -- "pliers, a hammer, a fake gun, and even sexual assault by a large Eastern European chef," the Post reports. The guy just didn't want to pay rent apparently.

From Don Bradley: Police think a shooting Thursday night shooting in Kansas City is
connected to a homicide earlier this week in Raytown in which a woman
was shot while watching her children get on a school bus.

“We
know there’s a connection, but we don’t know what that is,” said Kansas
City Police Detective Tom Prudden, who is part of the Metro Squad
investigation.

Dave Helling has more details at Prime Buzz. It's not clear in Brooks still needs a thumbs-up from the legislature. Most people know Brooks from his work with Ad Hoc, his time on the city council and his run for mayor, but he used to be a policeman years ago.

In Orlando, Fla., the attorney for a masseuse is trying to get a prostitution charge dismissed because the arresting officer -- who was undercover and getting a massage -- reportedly touched / groped his client's breast. The police say the officer did so because the masseuse allegedly lifted her shirt, which is a way that massage-parlor prostitutes will test to see if someone's a cop. (The theory is that a real cop would never do that.)

Welcome back to the Open Thread, our blog's space for off-topic comments and
discussion. If you've seen an interesting story somewhere else, feel
free to post a link below.

As
always, please follow our standard rules: Please sign your comments,
and please avoid profanity, as well as racially and sexually abusive
language. And when you sign your comments, please use only one
nickname.If you need to reach me, just send an email to jhart@kcstar.com. Thanks again, and have a great day!

Remember E-Verify? It's a government database where businesses can check potential hires to see if they're in the country legally. (In Arizona, all employers have to use it.) But a new study says that E-Verify failed to catch over half of the illegal immigrants who were processed because they used stolen identities, the Arizona Republic reports.

One happened about 1 this morning near 28th and Wabash, requiring one person to go to the hospital, KSHB reports. The other was in Overland Park, and police have already arrested a suspect. Authorities don't think either case is related to the Waldo rapes investigation.

In February 2008, a man named Ari Squire lured another guy, Justin Newman, to his house with the promise of a construction job, the Daily Herald of suburban Chicago reports. Instead, Newman was murdered. And Squire used his corpse in an elaborate scheme to fake Squire's death and make off with $5 million in insurance money. (Squire had been of Medicare fraud, so police think he wanted to start a new life elsewhere.)

Squire dressed Newman in Squire's clothing and put his ID on the body, but the "accident" -- which involved setting Newman's corpse on fire and dropping a diesel truck on it -- forced authorities to use DNA to confirm an identity, and the whole thing unraveled. Squire, hiding in a Missouri motel, killed himself.